By Eisabess Chee
“The government does the dreaming for us,” Daniel remarked thoughtfully, “so what about our own dreams?”
Organised by Singapore architect William S.W. Lim’s non-profit company Asian Urban Labs and held at Theatreworks on a blazing Saturday afternoon, the Singapore Dreaming Project Workshop was unprecedented in terms of its conceptualisation. Daniel, one of the main organising members, told me about how the workshop was envisioned as a four-hour long sharing session that itself comprised of 10-minute capsule presentations by a diverse array of “thinkers” (to employ the word used in its Facebook event page description). The end result? An amalgamation of voices ranging from the metaphorical to the meditative, the pragmatic to the cathartic—in short, a rojak of perspectives.
Front of the room: A minimalist, barely-there arrangement that contributed to the overall uncluttered mood
As its name suggests, rather reminiscently of the Colin Goh and Woo Yan Yan film released six years ago, I must add, this project was conceived with the intent to “move beyond layers of constraints – whether dogmatic or structural – to imagine all alternatives”. In other words, this project aims to challenge the limits of the Singaporean dream across multiple arenas and will be consolidated into a conference to be held at the beginning of next year.
At first glance, the relentless name-dropping of speakers on its event page is hardly impressive. Indeed, constructive discussion necessitates variety, but the crowded line-up appeared like an overambitious attempt at piecing together far too many aspects of Singapore. And yet never in my life was I gladder to have been proven unequivocally wrong! Each speaker, with his or her own unique background and focus, never failed to bring something refreshing and thought-provoking to the table in spite of the heavily-restrictive time constraint. Each speaker evidently sought as best as they could to provide some form of insight into their own specialisation, with or without slides, and regardless of the lengths of their delivery. Barring tea breaks, I sat enchanted as speakers breezed through topic after topic such as sustainable development and social equity.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, even though the event was a medley of varying concerns, it wasn’t long before literary-related issues began surfacing. The presentations that struck me as most pertinent to Singapore literature were ‘If We Dream Too Long’ by Prof Wee Wan Ling and ‘Our Pragmatic Dreams’ by Lee Hui Min.
The first was Prof Wee’s reflection on his presentation’s titular namesake, Goh Poh Seng’s If We Dream Too Long (Dream). Widely hailed as the “first true Singaporean novel” (to quote Koh Tai Ann), the story follows 18-year-old Kwang Meng, his dreams and the sacrifice thereof in the context of Singapore’s immediate post-independence years. Goh, whose novel was published to lukewarm response and whose vision of a bustling nightlife scene along Singapore River was not taken seriously till much later, was clearly ahead of his time. Prof Wee thus proposed that Dream criticised not only the typical 1972 Singaporean who could be pacified with the mere sense of solace in place of his dreams, but also the “world of standardisation and discipline” that the government had already affixed into place by then. Dream also suggested that the chase for dreams back then was aborted primarily so that the nation could be developed into a place of comfort for succeeding generations, and so the question begets: “Did we get what we want, for our children and for our children’s children?”
Lee, whose recently published non-fiction Chinese book Growing Up in Lee Kuan Yew’s Era has received plenty of praise from overseas readers, began by acknowledging the oxymoron in her use of “pragmatic” to describe “dreams”. However, Lee questioned if the juxtaposition of these two words was truly paradoxical. In reference to a project that collected dreams from around the world (the best articles I could retrieve were this and this), the Korean lady who created the project revealed that “the least inspiring ones” had originated from our very own city-state, born simply of the desire to upgrade from a HDB flat to a condominium unit. Have we grown too comfortable with our stable lives to be in want of change in our lives? Regardless, Lee critically raised the example of the Pledge and appended to it new meaning: she argued that the very ideal, “democratic society” encapsulated in this one-sentence pledge is aspired to “so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress”. In this vein, therefore, pragmatism and idealism are not so much dichotomies as allies in our quest for a better society.
Dream struck a chord with me as our module had explored post-independence poetry just last week. I mentally drew up a comparison of the novel against the works we studied and concluded with a tinge of poignancy that the subject matter across the two media and the four writers was not so different after all. In fact, even when measured across the dimension of time, it’s almost as if little has changed where dissatisfaction with the system is concerned—Goh’s very concerns of the 1970s echo through the decades to speak to us with resounding relevance even today. Have we stagnated? Has change occurred merely as a veneer? Is it therefore time that we leave behind our sorry excuse of tradition to move towards an all-inclusive society that will embrace one and all? (This is something to be considered especially where sexuality is concerned, in light of Arthur Yap’s sexual orientation being increasingly brought to the fore and of prominent personalities like Cyril Wong and Ivan Heng continuing to voice out on behalf of the marginalised gay community.) And whereas pragmatism used to be pitted against art (as per S. Rajaratnam’s and D.J. Enright’s starkly differing views), be it modernistic or realistic, Lee now beckons for an integration of the two to create a space in which dreaming towards a society that does not forget the disenfranchised as illustrated by Mohamed Imran’s metaphor, the socially vulnerable as mentioned in Yeoh Lam Keong’s presentation, and the economically dependent as underscored by Teo You Yenn is undoubtedly possible.
Back of the room: A wall of mind maps that scribed each and every speaker’s presentation
Most significantly, I realised hours later that while I was seated comfortably in the high-ceilinged, whitewashed room, eagerly scribbling down notes, in another part of Singapore another narrative of conflict and disharmony had unfolded. The question of dreams hence in an instant became that much more pressing: as we continue to develop into an island that will soon be home to 6.9 million inhabitants, what will become of our space to dream? Will our dreams ironically come under more threat? And will our dreams be nightmares, or will they, in the closing words of Prof Jane M. Jacobs, “[tend] towards harmonising and reconciling—past, present and future, myth and reality”?
Insofar as a Singaporean identity is concerned, we have clearly progressed beyond the awkward phase of EngMalChi and grappling with the coloniser’s language in various endeavours to mould it into a familiar tongue. But despite a common language amongst all, much remains to be articulated regarding the future of this nation and the direction in which we can proceed. As Singapore Dreaming moves into its second phase of bringing this discussion into the heartlands, I wish it all the best, and hope that the collective dream that is to emerge from this ceaseless conversation will render obsolete Lee Tzu Pheng’s early observation that “My country and my people/ are neither here nor there”.